Palestine Israel Action Group (PIAG)

  
  The Palestine Israel Action Group (PIAG) was formed in 2001 by a small group of committed individuals from Ann Arbor Friends Meeting. As a subcommittee of AAFM’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee,* PIAG’s aims are to educate the Quaker community and the wider public about the human costs of the Israel-Palestine conflict, to promote dialogue about ways to achieve security with justice for all people in the region, to help meet regional humanitarian needs, and to actively resist Israel’s Occupation through economic pressure on companies that profit from violations of Palestinian human rights.

As Quakers, we deplore the use of violence to solve human problems; we believe such actions harm both the victims and the perpetrators. As Americans, we are complicit in Israel’s violence, because our government enables the Occupation with over 15 million dollars per day in foreign aid to the Israeli government and military. As global citizens, we support international law, yet Israel’s attempts to achieve state security violate:

  • United Nations Resolution 242, which calls for the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from territory it occupied in 1967;
  • The Fourth Geneva Convention, which makes illegal the building of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian lands;
  • United Nations Resolution 194, which speaks to the rights of refugees;
  • The United Nations Committee Against Torture Report of 2001, which prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment;
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which decries arbitrary arrest, imprisonment without trial, and extra-judicial executions;
  • The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, which assures all peoples the right to freely determine their political status; and
  • The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits unlawful or arbitrary arrest, detention or imprisonment of children and adolescents, hundreds of whom are detained in Israeli prisons.

PIAG seeks a just resolution to the sixty-year Israel-Palestinian conflict that will take away the occasion of all war, repression, and desperate acts of revenge and retaliation between the two peoples. We urge all who yearn for peace in the Middle East to actively work to end this conflict.

PIAG’s views reflect those of many Ann Arbor Friends but do not represent Ann Arbor Friends Meeting as a whole.

Statement adopted by PIAG 12/15/06

*http://aa-peacemaking.quaker.org/
See also: quakerpiag.blogspot.com/